This invention relates to an elevator for a building having halls which are equipped with hall buttons that simultaneously perform an operation for calling a cage and an operation for registering a destination floor aboard the cage. More particularly, it relates to improvements in an operating apparatus for an elevator in which the movement of a waiting passenger having depressed such a hall button is tracked so as to register or cancel the call made with the hall button.
Usually, an elevator is so constructed that a hall call is registered by the use of an up button or down button installed in a hall and a cage is called on the basis of the hall call. A passenger who has gotten in the cage registers a cage call by the use of a destination button installed in the cage, so as to operate the cage to a desired floor. In this manner, with the conventional elevator, the call buttons need to be respectively manipulated in the hall and the cage.
In recent years, therefore, an elevator furnished with hall destination buttons by means of which desired floors are directly registered has been proposed in, for example, the official gazette of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 57-24310. This elevator has such advantages that a destination button need not be depressed in a cage, and that since the destination floor of a waiting passenger is known early, the group supervision performance is enhanced and the display of a waiting time becomes accurate.
However, even when the waiting passenger has depressed the up or down button or the destination button (hereinbelow, collectively termed `hall button`) in the hall, he/she may not get in the called cage by, e.g., utilizing a stairway or turning back at the recollection of another thing to do. Then, the cage having arrived undergoes a wasteful stopping operation, which may offend passengers in the cage and lengthen the waiting periods of time of other waiting passengers in the other halls.
Since some persons depress hall buttons out of mischief, the above situation is liable to occur and lowers the operating efficiency of the elevator.
In order to eliminate the drawback, an elevator described in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 58-147611 registers the cage call of a destination floor upon acknowledging that a waiting passenger has gotten in a cage, in such a way that increase in the output of a weighing device disposed under a cage floor is detected or that a charging device is disposed near the doorway of the cage, whereupon the interception of a light beam crossing the doorway is detected.
With the prior-art passenger detection method, for example, in a case where two or more passengers have gotten in the cage, it is impossible to detect which destination buttons the respective waiting passengers have depressed. Eventually, therefore, when any waiting passenger did not get in the cage, a cage cell is wastefully registered, and a problem similar to the foregoing still occurs.
Furthermore, as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-open No. 50-76563, an elevator is equipped with a waiting passenger number-detecting device in each hall. Upon detecting that, in spite of the registration of an up call or down call, there is no waiting passenger in the elevator hall, the elevator system decides that the up call or down call has been registered out of mischief, and it cancels the registration of the up call or down call.
Since, however, the waiting passenger number-detecting device detects only the number of waiting passengers in the elevator hall at the time of cage assignment, the decision of the mischievous calls is limited. By way of example, in a case where the presence of one waiting passenger at the third floor is detected and were both the up call and the down call have been registered at this time, obviously either call is the mischievous call. Nevertheless, the prior-art system cannot decide which call is the mischievous call. Eventually, a cage has been wastefully called.
Further, circumstances are similar as to the elevator whose halls are equipped with the destination buttons. Unless the situation where no waiting passengeer is in the elevator hall is established, which call is the mischievous call cannot be decided, and the lowering of the operating efficiency cannot be prevented.